VOLT-ING INTO THE FUTURE

Sam Lakha

September 15, 2009

A guest blog by Dr. Gary Kendall, Director of Climate Change Programs, SustainAbility

The future is bright, but in my case it isn’t orange, it’s electric. As I ease into lane 2 of the three kilometre banked circular test track at the Millbrook Proving Ground, my passenger – Don Cochrane, Sales & Marketing Director at Tesla Motors‘ UK arm – exhorts me to “floor it!”. So I put my foot down in a bright red Mark II Tesla Roadster, and I giggle at the instantaneous acceleration provided by a few thousand laptop batteries hooked up to an electric motor. “No, I said: ‘floor it’!”, Don chides me. “Back off and do it again.” I slow to a crawl, and then slam the pedal to the metal as so heartily encouraged; now I’m clinging on for dear life as I’m thrown back into the driver’s seat and this life-sized Scalextric car whizzes silently to 100 km/h in less than four seconds. The disadvantage of such lightning acceleration is that three kilometres of tarmac pass me by all too quickly, and before I know it we’re gliding back to the car park. Phew!

We are often frightened into believing that the post-petroleum age necessarily means returning to a primitive world of back-breaking manual labour where mobility services are provided by the horse and cart. Electric traction, we are told, is suitable for forklift trucks and golf carts, not for mass appeal and certainly not for enjoyment (if golf is indeed ‘a good walk ruined’, where does that leave golf carts?). However, the simple reality is this: if primitive is what you’re looking for, there are few better ideas than digging pre-historic sticky black liquids from a mile below the Earth’s surface and setting their derivatives on fire in a relic of 19th Century engineering called the internal combustion engine.

While the Tesla Roadster itself may not be the answer to the coming oil crunch and the spectre of climate change, it certainly dispels the myth that electric vehicles are essentially boring. It is not only thrilling to drive, it’s SIX TIMES more energy efficient than its closest oil-powered equivalent, the Lotus Elise. This means that even when powered entirely from dirty coal-fired electricity, the Tesla cuts CO2 emissions per kilometre in half. And of course, it can run entirely on sustainable renewable energy, generated from wind turbines and solar panels. It can cover almost four hundred kilometres on a single charge and can be recharged for pocket change. Does any of this sound remotely primitive?

The future is bright indeed, and it’s coming around the corner faster than you might think.